Carving the middle path

Here are your options. Choose at least one.

a) Meditate and destroy
b) Skate and destroy

Which will it be?

How about both?

Yeah, that sounds good.

It's been a good week. It pays to try and be mindful.

This is why I hate talking to you when...

The older I get, the less I have to believe in. I remember a time when things didn't sound like bullshit or totally devoid of value. I love life, but it doesn't mean shit, as much as I want it to; I want to be a good little existentialist, but I fail at it because I can't find or create the personal meaning that makes life worth living. I'm running on fear, laziness, and what passes for hope.

"Almost always the idea before the thing itself- in art, love, and all of life." -Rudi Tannemann

lectric chile (go)at (skate)

Tommy Guerrero, former Bones Brigade skater turned musician, said in an interview I read a few weeks ago that his music isn't exactly suited for skating, except for the walk back up a hill you just bombed. I can't say for sure, since I don't listen to music when I skate, as much as I'd like to (aural cues, such as the sound of approaching cars, are handy when you're cruising the neighborhood and don't feel like getting run over, and headphones tend to diminish said cues). However, for late nights like this, and contemplative mornings, it's a perfect soundtrack. I imagine it'd be good for laid-back cruising sessions, too. Whatever the case, the guy's music is killer, and makes me want to buy a Walkman and some headphones so I can jam it the next time I get to skate in the hour before sunset.

If you couldn't tell, I think about skating a lot these days.

Weighing In - II

Sometimes I sleep in the master closet, stretched out between rows of shoes, a winter coat added to my usual pile of blankets. The air does not move, and there is an odor of cedar that seems to grow stronger the longer I remain. The closet is similar to what I would want in a tomb, and is therefore a fine place to meditate on death. My closet renders death a warm, familiar, pleasantly scented thing.

-Marcus Gill, New York, NY, 2000


Writing cannot alert a reader to the purposelessness of life intending to give the reader hope. Once the world's mask has been removed, exposing the void where a face should be (or where we believe one should be), it cannot be put back on. Writing can remove that mask, and on rare occasions replace it with a new, temporary one, but that is all. Words cannot create meaning when meaning does not exist.

-Patricia Sklar, Marblehead, MA, 1952

I'd buy booze from this dude.

http://slanginliquorinthehood.blogspot.com/

Good stuff.

At least...

I'm drinking plenty of coffee these days.

Apropos of nothing, I know, but I was compelled to mention it.

Weighing In - I

It is imperative that unpleasant activities and environments be mitigated as much as possible, internal unpleasantness not necessarily excluded. However, the means of lessening the world's unpleasantness is one that should not be taken up without careful contemplation. I might suggest a method or two, but refrain from doing so, knowing that most who would apply such methods have no desire to be taken for miscreants of the highest order.

-Hernán Ochoa Dagú, Mérida, Yucatán, 1937


"Life's work" is bullshit. Everyone dies long before they've done anywhere near what they thought or hoped they'd do. Believing there's a master plan or some list of achievements laid out for each of us is stupid, and acting on that belief is even more stupid. It sets us up for disappointment and doesn't let us enjoy what's actually here in front of us. That kind of thinking takes away all the worth of leaving things unfinished, or never started at all. Failure becomes a mortal sin (and you can fucking guarantee people who believe in "God's plan" or their "life's work" believe in sin). What a joke! Why miss out on the beauty of failure or incompleteness or not doing something because we think our lives have some grand scheme? It's delusional, total self-delusion. God fucking forbid we admit we don't amount to much of anything, as far as our neighbors and the universe are concerned.

-Star Miller, Helena, MT 1988

escape

I'm drunk, just so you know. Doesn't mean any of the following is untrue (or sensible). Not that much will follow.

-Life, generally speaking, almost never excites me these days.
-I wish I'd been more of a miscreant in high school.
-She. Oh, she!
-Neck hurts.
-Bully soundtrack: missing only one crucial song.
-Marbles/ball bearings: check inventory.
-I miss Floyd boy.
-"Con su gusano.: Down the hatrch.
-I wanna move to Bullworth Vale.

Like I said, drunk. Thanks to every poor soul that's ever come on you.

Behold the bastard's blade!

After spending ten or fifteen minutes looking for parking on choked side streets, I forced myself through the packed downstairs bar at Rudyard's, got my hand stamped, and went upstairs, where the population was even denser, the temperature at least ten degrees higher, the humidity almost 100%, and the wait for a beer anywhere between five and ten minutes. Everything took forever, except breaking out into a sweat. I'd be sweating for the next two and a half hours- not some weakling forehead sheen, but the kind of sweat that saturates your clothes and seems to replace your skin.

Why did I do this? Because The Sword was playing, and since it was at Rudyard's, it was one of those rare occasions I could actually see a show after work- a show I was pretty excited about in the first place. I liked them when I saw them in 2006, their new album is solid, and this video is a stroke of brilliance. Last night they put on a good show, played what I wanted to hear, gave me reason to headbang like a fool, and sold me a classy t-shirt.

Worth the sweat and hassle, no question about it. Joe Bob says check it out.

Proud alumnus.

I've been playing Grand Theft Auto IV lately. Great game, across the board. My buddy Andy sent me the following link to this article which discusses why the GTA series has been so groundbreaking, among other things. I recommend reading it if you're a GTA fan and/or interested in the narratology of video games in general. It's also pretty damned funny.

As great as GTA is, however, my favorite Rockstar Games product has to be Bully. I'm playing it again, this time for the Xbox 360, and loving every minute of it. I got the soundtrack in the mail a couple days ago, and have spent more than a little spare time trying to track down something resembling a Bullworth Academy t-shirt. My Halloween costume this year will, if all goes well, involve someone sewing a Bullworth Academy crest onto a sweater for me (said sweater will then become a regular article of cold-weather clothing). The 360 version hasn't bugged out on me more than once, to my surprise, and while it's (thus far) not substantially different than its older PS2 ancestor, it's been very much worth buying again for the improved graphics and, well, just to play again. I'd much rather ride my bike or skate around Bullworth, tossing eggs at assholes and putting firecrackers in toilets, than committing vehicular manslaughter in San Andreas or Liberty City... but not always. There's no real comparison between the two games, in my opinion, as the tone of each is sufficiently unlike the other to nullify any "Bully=GTA with training wheels" comments. (Yeah, I know Bullworth Academy shows up tangentially in GTA IV, but I reckon you get my point.)

So yeah, two good games, two engrossing premises, two different overall moods, and yours truly gravitates towards the, ahem, "juvenile" one- unabashedly. Make of it what you will.

See you on campus, folks.

-DAS
Bullworth '06

The brown sound.

Been digging the hell out of Brant Bjork's newest offering, Punk Rock Guilt. Recorded in '05 but only released this month, it's another album of his where he plays all the instruments, and features some songs that have shown up on other albums in different forms. It's not rehash, though; the songs maintain enough similarity to previous versions to be recognizable, but are restructured in such a way as to be fresh and vital. Really good stuff, and not a bad introduction to the man's solo work if you haven't had the good fortune to hear him before.

I'd write more, not just about Brant Bjork, but I've gotta get to bed at something resembling a reasonable hour so I can take my madre to the airport tomorrow.

Later.

A stroll down Danny the Street

My parents are celebrating their 33rd wedding anniversary this weekend, so I'll be up in Jasper Saturday and most of Sunday, along with my brother, Tracey, kt and Altoid. I doubt there'll be anywhere to skate other than the driveway, but if space permits I'll probably bring my board with me.


I'm close to finishing the final volume of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol run. Like a lot of comics, I bought the first volume, liked it, and then bought all the other volumes within a relatively short span of time, which works out fine if the whole run is available but sucks when you have to wait months for the last volume to come out. This volume, Planet Love, feels like an epilogue for some reason, despite containing some rather massive developments on par with events from prior volumes. I should probably read the whole lot again, one right after another, and then comment... hey, maybe that could be an actual project of sorts. I'd probably enjoy doing something similar with Welcome to the NHK, another series that hasn't been released in its trade-paperback entirety yet, much to my vexation.


I suspect that regularly feeling that things will return to normal, or fall into place, or make sense (I can't decide which, if any, of these, is the right way to describe it) real soon now is not a good sign. It reeks of a misguided approach to the here and now, which bothers me. Gotta work on that, somehow.



Enjoy these Simon Bisley Doom Patrol covers while I help myself to a cigarette. G'night, y'all.

97a

I started skating again last November. I'm not any good, and I don't practice nearly enough, but I am going to visit the new skatepark opening up in town on June 1, armed with my Powell-Peralta Ripper reissue and rolling on (reissue) Rat Bones. I've never skated bowls, pools, vert, ditches, or anything other than streets, so it'll be a trip going there and watching kids less than half my age tear shit up. Luckily for me, I'm not too concerned about impressing anyone; I'm more or less content cruising and enjoying myself.

I do wish I had folks to skate with, though, which is why I joined the Old Man Army, a group of older skaters who are in for the fun. With any luck I'll get to know some folks well enough to start skating with them; with even more luck, they'll either be way better than me and can impart wisdom and skills, or they're just as bad as I am and we can look foolish en masse. Either way, good times will be had.

Never here

I finally bough a copy of The Radio One Sessions Elastica did. A few of you may know of my long-standing love of Elastica, which started when I saw the video for "Connection" on MTV in Venezuela, so the fact that I waited this long to get what was essentially the last thing the band released (or had released in its name) is inexplicable. That it's such a good record makes my delinquency even less acceptable.

The Radio One Sessions is one of those cultural phenomena that Britain seems to specialize it. You'd never see it in the States, at least these days: a band is invited to the radio station to play some songs, which are then recorded and (eventually) released. The only American thing I can think of that was similar- 'was' being the operative word here- would be the King Biscuit Flower Hour, which is defunct and focused on concerts. American radio is almost uniformly wretched, and it seems satellite radio isn't much better, but everyone knows these things already. I just wanted to comment on how sad it is that something as important as American radio- well, as important as American radio could be, and was- can't even provide an interesting outlet for musical performance anymore. Shit, maybe Radio One in England sucks too, but at least its existence results in good records.

Bitching and moaning aside, if you like Elastica, buy this record. It'll make your day better.

Memories far and daydreams wide.

Here I am again, maybe for a while. The bones have fallen in a pattern auspicious to my return to regularly clogging the internet's arteries like so much bad cholesterol, though it might take some time to get back into the swing of things. I considered starting a new journal, wherein I'd focus on specific topics that may or may not have been covered in my old writings, but fuck it. At least partially, that is- I may fire up a new website proper in the near future, once I'm done familiarizin' myself with Ubuntu, which is the OS I'm trying to use these days (read: since I installed it on my girlfriend's old laptop). Said website may feature exciting discourses on topics such as:

Blue Öyster Cult
skateboarding for tired old fucks
television shows
pastels
Ubuntu for tired old fucks
V8 juice
my current literary undertaking

and maybe more.

Don't bank on it happening soon, though. I'm a lazy, lazy man, so the aforementioned discourses will probably end up right here.

Adios for now, y'all.

-D.A. Smith